


love is a three time thing

by hoodiestrings



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, based on dan's formspring answer in 2009
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:07:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25221388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoodiestrings/pseuds/hoodiestrings
Summary: “Have you ever been in love?I’d say three times. Maybe once can’t count as real love. Then the next was, but it wasn’t happy love. Then the third time was the best time ever. Real true requited love which is the best feeling in the world.”– Dan Howell, 2009
Relationships: Dan Howell/Original Female Character(s), Dan Howell/Original Male Character(s), Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Comments: 8
Kudos: 41





	love is a three time thing

**Author's Note:**

> just practice stuff. i wrote this in half an hour at one in the morning lmao. i've been debating for a while whether i should post this or not  
> do tell me how to improve!

_**“Have you ever been in love?”** _

_**“** _ _I’d say three times. Maybe once can’t count as real love. Then the next was, but it wasn’t happy love. Then the third time was the best time ever. Real true requited love which is the best feeling in the world. **”**_

_**– Dan Howell, 2009** _

****

**i.**

You lose your breath when you see him.

He is beautiful, tall, taller than even you, dark hair and light eyes. You feel small, you feel loved, as he gathers you in your arms and presses kisses along your skin. His lips look like cotton candy, and he tastes like them too. You feel like he is the sun, and you are Icarus. And you spread your wings and you jump.

_higher and higher and higher ..._

_... and then you fell_

He doesn’t catch you.

He takes you apart behind the bicycle shed and whispers promises into your skin, promises that taste like lies. And now everywhere he touched, every single inch of you feels tainted. You feel used. You feel what heartbreak is for the first time. You are too young, and maybe what you felt wasn’t love at all. But still, you lay awake at night and wonder, if you are Icarus, then is this how Icarus felt as he fell down back to the earth?

Or did he stare at the sun and thought, _I tried?_

You stare at him in hallways, and he stares away.

You wait, and when you’re waiting, he catches someone else in his arms.

“Please,” you whisper to him one day. The word once filled with pleasure, just feels desperate instead, a different kind of desperate: the broken kind. He stares at you, eyes falling across your face.

His friends call him. He looks at you. He walks away.

You feel broken.

You cry behind the same shed he promised you the world. You cry behind the same shed where your world started, then ended. You cry behind the same shed you felt special, and now you feel nothing.

You lock yourself into your room and don’t come out. You don’t eat. You don’t talk. You stop crying after a while. Your mother knocks at your door. She knows what a heartbreak looks like. But you couldn’t tell her that it wasn’t some dainty girl who turned you down. It was a taller guy instead, rough around the edges, who stole your innocence and then your heart.

He didn’t return them either.

The broken heart got mended as days, weeks, months passed. But you couldn’t bear to think that you lost yourself behind some bicycle shed that left dirt caked on your legs.

He never looks at you again.

**ii.**

She sits beside you. The wind is blowing, and her dress flows along with it. Her hair does too. “You’re sitting beside me, but it feels like you’re oceans away.” she confesses.

 _Three years,_ you think.

She is looking at you, eyes bare, hoping, pleading. You don’t look at her. You can’t. She is soft skin, and softer lips. She is gentle waist and curved hips. You can’t tell her that you touch her, and you think of hard muscles beneath your palms. You can’t tell her that you kiss her, and you think of strong jaw and stubble under your fingers.

You don’t speak at all.

“I love you, Dan,” she pleads “Please say something.”

And the truth is, you _did_ love her. Once upon a time, you did.

But not anymore.

“I did once,” you say, and she moves back as if struck.

You did. You really, really did.

She held you when thinks got tough at home. And she sat through every time you spoke about a video game. She talked and she listened and she cared and she loved. She made you feel like everything at once. When she kissed you, three years ago, you kissed back. You still sometimes look at her and think: _I don’t deserve you._ And maybe, you don’t.

But then the touches stopped making your heart flutter, and the kisses stopped making your heartbeat stop.

She nods, reaches out and hugs you.

“You deserve better,” you tell her, and hold her close.

One last time.

She nods against your shoulder, and you pretend you couldn’t feel the wetness seeping through your shirt, where she has tucked her head in. You speak, instead. You tell her you are grateful, for everything. You tell her that you don’t regret a single thing. You tell her, again, that she deserves so much better.

“You too,” she whispers “Someday.”

_someday_

And that was that.

**iii.**

He looks at you, the image distorted behind your laptop screen. His black hair sweeps across his forehead, and you feel warmth curling into the bottom of your stomach as you stare at him. He is speaking, mouth curling around each syllable and you wonder how they would feel against your skin, how they would taste like. You don’t hear a word he says.

“Dan?” he calls, eyes laughing.

You blush, you look down and twist your fingers together.

“Have you ever fallen in love?” you ask him, before you can stop yourself. Your eyes widen, and you flush darker. You want to take it back, do _anything._

Phil gives you a smile, a secret kind of smile.

You feel the cloud lift from your shoulders, the weeping cloud that follows you around and adds the weight of the world on your shoulder. You don’t know want the smile means, but he presses his palm against his laptop screen. You do the same. He stares at you and you stare back. For a minute, you almost fool yourself into believing that there’s just a screen between you, and not three hundred miles.

“Come to Lancashire,” he says.

You nod.

Weeks later, he pulls you by your hand to the Manchester Eye, the same hand that stroked your cheek hours before.

He whispered, _beautiful,_ when he held you.

You smile as you think of it now.

The sun dips below the horizon, and the sky paints itself in a million colours. But neither of you is looking at the view.

“Phil,” you breathe out, and then you kiss him, and before you can pull away, he kisses you back.

Later that night, you lay curled up on his chest, heartbeat resonating in your ears.

_beautiful_

You smile. You think about your past and where things went wrong. You used to think you were running out of paper but there’s so much more to write, so many stories to tell, so many pages to fill. You think about Phil, then, and you think about how you belong, how you feel at home, a home you never knew you had.

 _Someday,_ you think, and then, _n_ _ow. Right now. Right here._

You fall asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> hope you enjoyed!


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